Arduinna

Posted by Sal Pizarro

https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/09/18/san-joses-bark-in-the-park-putting-rescued-dogs-in-the-spotlight/

https://www.mercurynews.com/?p=12210229

It’s that time of year again when William Street Park in San Jose really goes to the dogs. Of course, I’m talking about the 27th annual Bark in the Park on Saturday. There’ll be about 2,500 pooches and more than twice that many people in the park on William and South 16th streets.

The canine convention is always a lot of fun — unless you’re a cat or a squirrel — but this year it is adding a new element that’s pretty important. It’s called Animal Rescue Row, a section of the event that’s dedicated to local rescue and adoption organizations. People will get to meet dogs available for adoption, and you can also see the pups strut their stuff on the main stage between 3 and 5 p.m.

Annie Hermes, who owns Messenger Events and organizes Bark in the Park with the Campus Community Association, said she’s exited to give the adoption agencies the spotlight, though finding forever homes for pups has long been part of Bark in the Park’s DNA.

“While creating a festive space for animal lovers to gather, shop, learn and play has always been a part of the event Creating a space to promote animal adoption has also been a primary focus of Bark in the Park since its inception nearly three decades ago.” Hermes said.

There’ll be a lot of fun to be had, too. The Veterinary Emergency Group is hosting popular events on the main stage, including the pet/owner lookalike contest at noon, a dog costume contest at 1 p.m. and a tail-wagging contest at 2 p.m. The whole event runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and adults can get in with a $10 donation. Kids and dogs are free, and the funds raised support Humane Society Silicon Valley, the San Jose Animal Care Center and other nonprofits. Get more info at www.barksanjose.org.

KEPLER’S TURNS 70: It’s been 70 years since Roy Kepler opened his legendary bookstore in Menlo Park, and the long legacy of Kepler’s Books is being celebrated with a free block party Saturday. The festivities at 1010 El Camino Real will include a photo booth, food vendors, kids’ activities and live music from Peninsula rockers Effie Zilch.

The bookstore started gaining its following during the Beat era, becoming the gathering spot for the Peninsula’s intellectual set around the same time similar ideas were brewing at Cody’s Books in Berkeley and City Lights in San Francisco. Nothing lasts forever, though, and it seemed as though the revolutionary spirit embodied by Kepler’s Books wasn’t enough to pay the bills in a world of Amazons and Barnes & Nobles. But just as Kepler’s Books closed its doors at the end of August 2005, the community made its voice heard and the reorganized operation reopened just a few weeks later.

The block party at the Menlo Center runs from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., but that’s not the only Kepler’s celebration in the works. There’s also a 70th anniversary benefit, “An Evening With Joan Baez,” on Oct. 29. The legendary counterculture singer, who performed at Kepler’s in the 1950s and ’60s, will be in conversation with Kimberly Ford, whose literary seminars are a Kepler’s staple. Tickets to that one are $200, but that includes appetizers, desserts and a signed copy of Baez’s book of drawings, “Am I Pretty When I Fly?”

You can get more information about those events and others being held by the Kepler’s Literary Foundation at www.keplers.org.

PARK PLACE: The nonprofit transit advocacy group Transform is hosting a Park(ing) Day pop-up parklet outside Mezcal restaurant on San Fernando and First streets in downtown San Jose on Sept. 19. Park(ing) Day is a global day of action to spur people to turn public parking spaces into vibrant areas. During the 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. event, you can work on an art project, enjoy treats from Mezcal and learn more about Transform’s SPOT SJ project, which aims to make better use of the city’s existing parking spaces.

LOOKING FOR CREATIVITY: It’s not too late to apply for one of three spots as a San Jose Creative Ambassador for 2026. Each creative ambassador who is selected will receive a stipend of $12,000 to produce a project that engages the public in creative expression. Applications are due at 11:59 p.m. Sunday, and you can find out more about it at bit.ly/2026CreativeAmbassadorCSJ.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/09/18/san-joses-bark-in-the-park-putting-rescued-dogs-in-the-spotlight/

https://www.mercurynews.com/?p=12210229

Posted by Kyle Martin

https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/09/18/homeless-advocates-drop-lawsuit-over-fremont-camping-ban/

https://www.mercurynews.com/?p=12208528

FREMONT — A lawsuit that tied up Fremont’s controversial camping ban has been withdrawn, paving the way for the city to begin enforcing it at homeless encampments.

It all started on Feb. 11, when the Fremont City Council approved one of the strictest camping bans anywhere in the region and California. On the same day the lawsuit was filed on March 4, the council walked back a clause that would have allowed county prosecutors to criminally charge anyone caught “aiding and abetting” homeless residents.

The ban on camping on Fremont city streets was supposed to go into effect on March 13, but was paused at the recommendation of a federal judge, which city leaders did not contest.

On Sept. 5, the lawyer representing several faith-based organizations and homeless residents dropped the lawsuit, claiming a “political” win in the case because public outrage influenced the city to remove the “aiding and abetting” clause.

“We still consider that a victory,” the attorney, Anthony Prince, said in an interview Wednesday.

Fremont City Manager Karena Shackelford and City Attorney Rafael Alvarado Jr. did not return requests for comment. Instead, city spokeswoman Geneva Bosques offered a written statement that said the city was “pleased with the outcome.”

“The city will continue prioritizing its encampment interventions on conditions posing a health and/or safety risk to the community,” Bosques wrote. She added that the city is “hopeful” that funding recently made available through Measure W, a $1.8 billion bond voters passed in 2020 to help combat homeless issues, will help more unsheltered residents find “stable and safe housing.”

Bosques also said the city hasn’t issued any citations or made any arrests “under the authority of the camping ordinance” since council adopted the ban. The ordinance came on top of a vehicle parking ban the council approved last November prohibiting large trucks and RVS from staying in one place longer than 72 hours.

“I thought that was one of the dumbest laws I ever heard of,” homeless resident Steven Leal, 48, said in an interview Thursday at his camp near Quarry Lakes Regional Park. “What are you going to do with all the homeless people?”

Residents and homeless advocates previously pushed back against the city’s ban because they worried of legal persecution by Fremont police. Advocates feared making charitable donations of any kind — such as tents, clothing, food and water and other camping “paraphernalia” — would be considered aiding and abetting an encampment, which could have been punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail, according to the ban’s previous language.

But by suing the city, Prince said, advocates forced the council to reconsider and remove the contentious clause. The city, he said, has “stayed their hand,” and left unsheltered people alone.

“The tents are up,” Prince said. “The measure is still on the books, but it’s not being enforced.”

In court filings, the city’s attorneys wrote that Prince and his clients had “taken away valuable time that the court could devote to other major and serious civil and criminal cases” by missing two deadlines to file an amended complaint, following the removal of the aiding and abetting clause. The city filed a motion to dismiss the case in August, citing Prince’s failure to submit filings on time.

This week, Prince acknowledged that a judge likely would have ruled in the city’s favor to dismiss the case, which he said would have prevented a future suit over the ban. By voluntarily dropping the case, he said, his clients reserve the right to pick the case back up.

He said another suit would be likely if the city begins “aggressively” enforcing the camping ban.

“We’re not going to give up on the whole issue of homelessness in Fremont. Just the opposite,” Prince said.

In the meantime, Prince added he and his clients are looking to take aim at some kind of future legislation at the state level that would broaden rights and resources for homeless people throughout California.

“It’s unacceptable for people to have to be on the street and be put at risk by a city that has for the most part failed to seriously address the issue of homelessness in Fremont,” he said.

Enrique “Kix” Renteria, a 30-year-old homeless resident, said Thursday that living unsheltered in Fremont is “overwhelming,” and called the camping ban “dehumanizing.”

Born and raised in San Jose, Renteria said he and his girlfriend have been living near the Quarry Lakes Regional Recreation Area since 2020, along with their four pets — three dogs named Hyphy, Do Too and Lunch Box and a cat named Genesis. Though the city had not cleared any camps as of Thursday, he said he’s worried they now could.

“What’s next? We’re already having a hard time day by day,” Renteria said.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/09/18/homeless-advocates-drop-lawsuit-over-fremont-camping-ban/

https://www.mercurynews.com/?p=12208528

Posted by Caelyn Pender

https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/09/18/man-stabbed-outside-daly-city-bart-station-suspect-at-large/

https://www.mercurynews.com/?p=12210573

DALY CITY — A man was stabbed outside a BART station here Wednesday afternoon, authorities said.

The victim was taken to the hospital and remained in critical condition Thursday, said Chris Filippi, a communications officer for BART.

Around 3:20 p.m. Wednesday, the victim was stabbed near the bus zone outside the Daly City station, authorities said.

Police are still investigating the stabbing, Filippi said. Investigators from the BART Police Department and other local law enforcement agencies are working to locate the suspect and have collected details and suspect descriptions from witnesses, he said.

After the stabbing on Wednesday, BART trains did not stop at the station for about 25 minutes, Filippi added.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/09/18/man-stabbed-outside-daly-city-bart-station-suspect-at-large/

https://www.mercurynews.com/?p=12210573

Posted by Nate Gartrell

https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/09/18/she-was-abducted-to-bay-area-kept-as-a-child-sex-slave-in-backyard-shed-now-jane-doe-has-her-day-in-court/

https://www.mercurynews.com/?p=12210499

DUBLIN — It was Jane Doe’s first time laying eyes on Juan Aguilar since the 44-year-old man had been convicted of trafficking her to the Bay Area and keeping her in a backyard shed at his San Leandro home, where she’d later tell police he’d rape her “constantly.”

The Aug. 29 court date marked nearly four years to the day since San Leandro police investigators discovered her in the shed, following up on a tip from child protective services in San Francisco. Back then, Doe was 15. A Honduran native, she knew no one but her rapist, who brought her to the U.S. and would later coach her to “do the usual” as he set up dates with men who wanted to sexually abuse her for cash, according to court records.

Since 2021, Doe’s undertaken the painful healing process, using walking, cycling, reading and therapy to embark down her difficult path. Aguilar has been in jail the entire time, and has now been sentenced to 18 years for human trafficking, rape and forcible oral copulation. When he was formally sentenced to prison on Aug. 29, Doe wrote a statement but asked a county victims’ advocate to read it aloud, court records show.

“There is sadness, anger, and I feel vulnerable when remembering, as if every word is laden with a pain that has not yet fully healed. The nights are the hardest,” Doe wrote. “I often sleep terribly and have nightmares, trapped in memories that I cannot undo, longing to regain my lost innocence.”

But she added: “I want you to know that I am working hard to reconcile my past and my present. I have the support of good people who encourage me, and I have a therapist.”

In 2021, Doe’s statement to police was almost too horrible to fathom. She described how Aguilar, who had a Honduran passport, traveled there in 2020 and made contact with Doe’s grandmother, and balked when the woman said he was “too old” for Doe. At the time, police believed Doe was 17, but came to find out she was actually 15, court records show.

“(Aguilar) also returned in January with a gun and threatened to kill them, so Doe left with him on a bus. He first raped her at an unknown hotel … The two traveled to Guatemala, where defendant Aguilar raped her again and threatened to let him do what he wanted or ‘you know what will come of your grandmother,'” according to a court filing by prosecutors. “From Guatemala they traveled to Mexico, where he raped her again. He left her with a ‘coyote’ who was to help her cross the border. That ‘coyote’ also forced her to have sex with him. In May of 2021, the ‘coyote’ brought Doe across the border. She first was brought to Dallas, and then a male drove her to San Leandro.”

She ended up in Aguilar’s backyard shed, occasionally leaving to spend time in a nightclub basement in San Francisco — where one of his family members owned a clothing shop — or to be sexually abused by paying customers, prosecutors said in court filings. Eventually, she was able to alert a CPS employee in San Francisco, leading to the October 2021 police raid.

Aguilar gave a police interview in which he admitted to sex with Doe on four occasions, and claimed to be a bouncer at a club where his wife, Margaret Wilson, was engaged in prostitution, authorities said. He denied ever trafficking Doe.

Wilson, like Aguilar, was charged with kidnapping to commit a sex crime, human trafficking of a minor, forcible rape, and forcible oral copulation, under the theory that she either helped Aguilar abuse Doe or sometimes participated in it. She pleaded no contest to an assault charge for probation and time already served in jail. Court filings say that Wilson has “very complex” medical problems and had listed Aguilar as her caretaker.

Aguilar was transferred to North Kern State Prison on Sept. 3, and remains there, records show.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/09/18/she-was-abducted-to-bay-area-kept-as-a-child-sex-slave-in-backyard-shed-now-jane-doe-has-her-day-in-court/

https://www.mercurynews.com/?p=12210499

Posted by Paul Rogers

https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/09/18/popular-big-sur-waterfall-trail-reopens-after-being-closed-for-two-years/

https://www.mercurynews.com/?p=12210159

One of the most popular hiking trails in Big Sur has reopened after a huge redwood tree smashed through a 70-foot bridge over a big ravine during a winter storm two years ago, blocking public access.

The Pfeiffer Falls Trail in Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, a favorite for generations of hikers, is back, state parks officials announced this week.

For decades, thousands of people every year hiked up the 1.5-mile round trip route through a redwood-lined stream leading to a 60-foot waterfall.

But the trail has been battered in recent years. Six of its wooden bridges, stairs, signs, hand railings and an observation deck were destroyed in the 2008 Basin Complex Fire.

The trail was temporarily and roughly rerouted. After years of delays from heavy winter storms, COVID, funding shortfalls, and more fires, crews built a new trail as part of a $2 million upgrade to the park, with impressive new wooden bridges, signs and other amenities, completing the project in 2021.

But then, less than two years later, a punishing atmospheric river storm sent a large redwood tree crashing down the steep slopes of the forest, slamming into the main bridge and causing other damage to the new facilities.

After raising repair funds, obtaining permits and getting help from the California Conservation Corps, state parks officials working with Save the Redwoods League rigged equipment in the remote area and completed repairs, restoring access.

“State Parks staff have worked hard to replace the damaged portion of the bridge so visitors can enjoy this lovely hike through the redwoods again,” said Jim Doran, State Parks Monterey District maintenance chief.

“Access is very difficult,” he said. “Everything has to be done by hand. There’s no way to get heavy equipment in there. Everything has to be hand carried. It’s very rugged terrain.”

The wooden bridge that was wrecked spans the Pfeiffer Redwood Creek ravine. Repairs cost roughly $50,000, according to state parks officials.

“It’s unfortunate that the trail had to close so soon after our original renovations,” said Matthew Gomez, senior parks program manager for Save the Redwoods League.

“The ravine is a challenging area to build something as intricate as this bridge, so it took a lot of careful planning,” he added, calling the new bridge and trail “better than ever.”

The 1,346-acre Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park is a central attraction in Big Sur. The property was owned in the 1800s by one of the early Big Sur settler families, the Pfeiffers, who operated a lodge and cabins for visitors who came by stagecoach. In 1933, after a Los Angeles developer offered to buy the property for $320,000 to build a subdivision, John Pfeiffer sold it to California’s state parks department instead to preserve it in its natural state.

With its stunning rocky coastline, majestic mountains and deep redwood-shrouded valleys, Big Sur, the writer Henry Miller once said, is “the face of the earth as the creator intended it to look.”

But the rugged landscape where the North American continent crashes head-long into the Pacific Ocean is in a near-constant state of natural upheaval and calamity. Highway 1, which runs in a hair-raising, two-lane ribbon from Carmel to Hearst Castle, has been closed more than 60 times due to slides and other disasters since it first opened in 1937. The southern portion of Highway 1 is closed now.

On February 9, 2024, a massive landslide occurred near Lucia, about 20 miles south of Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. The event, which began 450 feet above the roadway, was named Regent’s Slide, and is still being cleared by crews working for Caltrans, who have been driving steel rods into the side of the steep cliffs to better secure and stabilize the area.

For the original repairs to the Pfeiffer Falls Trail, crews from the California Conservation Corps, California’s state parks department and the nonprofit American Conservation Experience put in 66,000 hours of work between 2017 and 2021. They built 160 redwood stairs up steep slopes. They hauled in hundreds of 16-foot-long redwood beams by hand to build railings. They removed 4,150 square feet of old concrete and asphalt, enough to cover a basketball court.

In that job and the recent repair effort, workers rigged steel cables and pulleys into nearby trees to lift the 10,000-pound bridge, Doran said. They replaced its redwood rails and decking, and had to order a 15-foot specially fabricated fiberglass piece from a Texas company to repair the bridge base. It’s rock abutment also was damaged and had to be repaired.

People are already out taking advantage of the restored access, he added.

“There are tons of people enjoying it,” Doran said. “Luckily we still have some water in the waterfall this time of year. A lot of families who are camping in the campground want to do an hour hike and see the waterfall. It’s a really good all-ages hike.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/09/18/popular-big-sur-waterfall-trail-reopens-after-being-closed-for-two-years/

https://www.mercurynews.com/?p=12210159